


Dying Of The Light

by Pline



Series: The Way Back [2]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coma, Firefam Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Character Death, POV Alternating, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24860845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pline/pseuds/Pline
Summary: If Purgatory was a place on Earth, it would be a hospital waiting room.OrBuck is in a coma, brain-dead - or so that's what the doctors say anyway.(Silent Stormtold from the Firefam's POV)
Relationships: Athena Grant/Bobby Nash, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Firehouse 118 Crew, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: The Way Back [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796737
Comments: 61
Kudos: 314





	Dying Of The Light

**Author's Note:**

> **I recommend you read _Silent Storm_ first.**
> 
> The title is from the poem _Do no go gentle into that good night_ by Dylan Thomas.

Buck’s body flies upwards.

Someone screams, a helpless shout, a useless warning.

Buck’s body crashes against the ground and it doesn’t move again.

* * *

If Purgatory was a place on Earth, it would be a hospital waiting room.

Hen can’t say how long they have been sitting here on those uncomfortable plastic chairs but it feels like forever. No one is talking among them and, even if an hospital is never silent, the only thing that she can hear is her heart beating loud and fast in her ears.

Her gaze is fixed on her hands and though there isn’t any blood on them, the metallic smell of it still makes her gag.

It’s her fault.

Buck is in the hospital because she didn’t react fast enough.

She saw the car, she saw Buck standing in the way. Why didn’t she move faster? She was still too far away when Buck hit the ground.

If only she had yelled out a warning, or rushed to push him out of the way, then none of them would be here.

“Family of Evan Buckley?”

They all stand as one but it’s Maddie who takes a step forward. She stands in front of a doctor whose face is kind – she is shaking but she is still holding herself tall.

“I’m his sister.”

“Doctor Baker,” he introduces himself before glancing at them, all tensed behind her. “I think it’s best you follow me somewhere a bit more private.”

Maddie’s breath catches and, after one last terrified look at Chim, she goes to follow the doctor, her figure disappearing from their view.

Once again, they can do nothing but wait – helplessness claws at Hen’s heart. Why would the doctor not speak before them too? Would he do it if he had good news to tell?

She tries not to imagine the worse, but, as her gaze meets Athena’s, she knows they are all thinking the same thing.

Whatever Dr Baker has to tell Maddie, this isn’t anything they want to hear.

Something is very wrong with Buck.

* * *

Eddie is the first to notice her coming back.

Maddie’s eyes are empty, her skin wan. Gone is the strength that held her together just moments earlier, she now looks like a ghost of herself. Eddie doesn’t need to be told – he knows.

“He’s gone.”

The entire world shatters around him.

This is Shannon all over again except this time he never even had a chance with Buck to make it work.

“You can see him, he’s in a coma but – he’s brain-dead.”

Only then her emotions show. Her voice breaks, her voice fills with tears. Chim catches her when her legs give up from under her.

Her sobs are loud but Eddie is far away from it all.

Brain-dead.

Buck is in a coma and he won’t wake up form it.

It’s over.

Buck is gone.

Buck’s body may still be alive but he is dead.

Around him, Eddie can sense people talking, crying, but he sees and feels nothing. All that he knows in that moment is his grief, enormous and all-encompassing, it crushes him and leaves him nothing but an empty shell of a man.

Eddie has been in love with two people in his life and he has lost both of them to a car accident. If this is the universe having a terrible sense of irony, then Eddie does not feel like laughing.

Buck is gone. Buck is brain-dead.

Tears fall from his eyes and he lets them, why would it matter anyway? He feels empty, swallowed all by his pain, and it’s so much to feel at once that he can’t feel anything at all anymore.

“Eddie.”

He turns his head, his movements slow.

It’s Athena.

Her eyes are red-rimmed but she still manages to look at him with kindness.

“Do you need to get outside?”

“No,” he rasps out. “I need to see him.”

Athena says something, to Bobby he thinks but he isn’t sure – all is jumbled, nothing makes sense anymore. He feels her taking him by the arm and leading him through the hospital corridors but in that moment he is sure, a piece of him died in that waiting room and he will never get it back.

Buck is laying between white sheets, tubes and machines everywhere. He is too pale – pale as death.

Eddie blinks and it’s not just Buck he sees, it’s Shannon too.

Why can’t he never have what he wants? Why must all the people he loves end up in hospital beds, dying?

Someone sobs, a chilling wail of pain, and it takes him a minute to realize it’s him that’s making that sound.

Athena is standing close to him and she is stroking his back and saying words that he knows are meant to be comforting but he can’t hear them and he can’t breathe and he can’t keep on watching Buck laying there, still and not really there anymore and it’s so unfair that Buck is gone, all but dead already and Eddie is left behind, alone again to deal with this pain and he can’t he can’t he can’t –

“I can’t do this,” Eddie croaks.

And then he is running away – out of Buck’s room, out of the hospital. Just away, far from this reality he wants no part of.

Maybe if he ignores it, he will wake up tomorrow and Buck won’t be gone.

* * *

Buck does not wake up.

Hours pass and he still lays the same, silent and unreachable.

The people that love him linger in the hospital like ghosts until, one by one, they leave, their shoulders low, their eyes down.

* * *

Buck is never still.

Even in his seep, he turns and mumbles like he has always done ever since he was a kid.

Now, though, Buck is laying so still that if it weren’t for the machines beeping around him, Maddie would have believed him lifeless.

These machines are the only things keep her brother alive but it’s only a shell of him.

Brain-dead.

Dr Baker’s words echo on and on in her head. She refuses to believe that her baby brother is gone. This would be too unfair – they have only found their way back to each other after years apart. They have only started to be siblings again.

He is the last blood family that she has left – her parents have never and will never be her family. She can’t lose him.

At last, she thought that she could get her happy ending. She has a job that she is passionate about, she is in a loving relationship with the man of her dreams, and she has her brother back in her life.

She had.

She _h_ _ad_ her brother back in her life.

If Dr Baker is right, Buck is gone.

Maddie wants to shake his unconscious form, throw off the covers and turn all the lights on like the used to when he was a kid and he didn’t want to go to school. She wants to yell at the skies, beg anything or anyone that could hear her to give him back to her.

There is nothing she wouldn’t do to get him to open his eyes, but there is nothing she can do.

She can just be there for him and hope for the impossible.

Her gaze falls on his face and that’s when she sees a tear rolling down his temple.

She is at his side in less than a second, one hand on his arm, the other on his cheek and she wipes away the tear.

“Oh my God, Buck? Can you hear me?”

Buck makes no movement, no indication that he has heard her at all.

“Evan, please. Open your eyes for me.” She catches his hand in hers and silently sends a prayer to anyone who could hear her. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

But Buck’s hand does not even twitch. It’s still and boneless in her own hand.

She stays like this for a long time, feeling her heart break all the more with every minute that passes without her brother responding.

She sighs and lets go, and then she leaves because she can’t take the sight of Buck immobile anymore, and she knows she would burst out sobbing if she stayed one more moment.

That moment of senseless hope crushed her – she’s falling apart.

* * *

Athena comes home from her shift, exhausted beyond words.

Buck has been in a coma for two days and nothing has changed. His doctor is sure that there is nothing that can be done for him and, even though no one has dared to voice the fear, they are all waiting on the day where Dr Baker will tell Maddie it’s time to take Buck off life support.

As soon as Athena sets foot in her living room, her gaze falls on her husband, sitting on the couch, tears streaming down his face, shaking.

Panic rises in her – no. Please, God, no.

“Bobby?” she asks and it’s so close to begging. “Is Buck – ”

She can’t even bring herself to say it.

“Nothing happened,” Bobby replies and she staggers with the force of her relief.

Wordlessly, she goes to sit next to her husband, and she waits. Whatever is gnawing at him, he needs time to process it and she will give it to him. She can be patient.

Suddenly, he turns to her, his eyes burning with grief, and he’s shaking.

“I can’t lose him, Athena,” he says brokenly. “He’s my son in everything but blood.”

Her heart shatters all over again. She wishes there was something she could do to comfort her husband but what could she do? She is in pain too. She loves Buck, he is an integral part of her family, and Bobby – God, Bobby.

Bobby has lost two children and he might be losing a third.

Shaking herself, she takes his hand, bringing it up to her mouth to press a gentle kiss.

“I’m so sorry,” she says and her voice is thick with unshed tears. “But we can’t lose hope just yet. You know our Buckaroo. He’s a fighter. That boy survived a firetruck crushing him, a pulmonary embolism and a tsunami. He will survive this too.”

With all of her heart, she prays the he does.

“I can’t go back there,” Bobby chokes out. “I can’t – I can’t watch him die. I can’t do this again. This isn’t fair, Athena. He’s not even thirty yet and now he’s laying in a hospital bed, only alive because he’s hooked up to machines that are breathing for him. I had to watch Marcy go, I can't watch Buck die. I'm not strong enough to go through this again. This isn’t fair.”

His voice breaks. His face falls. He cries out and she is here to catch him like he was there to catch her after she closed Emmett’s case.

He weeps in her arms, unrestrained, and she holds him tight.

Her lips will surely be bruised with how hard she is biting on them in an attempt to keep her own sobs quiet.

Bobby is right – this isn’t fair.

Buck deserves to live and they don’t deserve to lose him.

* * *

Being a parent is having difficult conversations with your kid.

Eddie has had too many with Christopher already – reenlisting, Shannon leaving, Christopher’s limitations due to his CP, them leaving El Paso for Los Angeles, Shannon dying.

And now this.

If he could, Eddie would protect Christopher from this. Chris has already lost so much in so little time, but it’s important that he knows the truth. He was not able to say goodbye to his mother, but he can say goodbye to his Buck.

The only thing Buck can do is to be Christopher’s rock. He will be strong for him because he has no other choice.

So the day after Buck has been admitted into the hospital, Eddie sits his son on the couch and takes a deep, deep breath, trying to find the courage he will need to have this dreaded conversation.

“Buddy, you know Buck has been in the hospital.”

That’s the only thing Eddie told him – he had to, they had plans together. They always do.

“Do you know what a coma is?”

“It’s when people are asleep a long time, right?” Christopher asks, wide-eyed.

“That’s right. Buck is – he’s asleep, and the doctors don’t know how to wake him.”

Chris looks down with a frown, “When is is he gonna wake up then?”

It takes all his strength not to break down again right there and then, but that’s not what his son needs from him. He can’t show him how hopeless this is.

“We don’t know, Chris? It might be take a long time.” He might never wake up, he won’t say. “We can go see him if you want, but you need to know he won’t move.”

“Just tell him to wake up, Dad. I miss him. Buck listens to you, if you tell him to wake up, he will.”

“I’ll try.”

God, he will try.

* * *

“Wake up, Buck. You need to wake up. I – I can’t do this without you. I need you. Christopher needs you. Hell, the whole team needs you. You can’t leave us.”

He reaches for his hand – anything to remind himself that Buck is still here, even if he’s not really there anymore.

“You can’t die, Buck. You can’t leave me.”

And he doesn’t want to say it, not like this, but he promised Christopher he would try to wake Buck up and he doesn’t know what else would.

“I love you. And I think you love me too, but I was just too scared to say it. Now the only thing I’m scared of is that you’ll die before I have a proper chance to tell you.”

They had so many chances to confess, to own up to the depth of their feelings. They always thought they would have more time.

“So, you have to wake up, okay? You have to come back to me.”

Buck does not hear him. He does not move.

* * *

Chim feels his mask crumble. He has to be strong for Maddie, he wants nothing but to be strong for everyone, Eddie, Bobby, Hen and everyone affected by Buck’s fate.

But he can’t keep pretending this isn’t hitting him just as hard.

Buck has been a brother to him ever since he joined the 118, but, Chim, still reeling from Kevin’s death, took a long time to come to terms with it and he sure as hell never said it to Buck.

Why did he never tell Buck? Chim lost Kevin and it hurt more than any rebar through his skull ever could – hurts still like phantom pains from a missing limb. But at least Kevin knew. They had called each other brothers for the longest time.

Why didn’t Chim say it to Buck? Now Buck might be gone forever and Chim will never have a chance to say it at all and it’s not like he can talk to anyone about it. Maddie is losing her actual brother, Bobby is a mess, everyone knows that he loves Buck like he’s his own kid. Not to mention Eddie who is losing the love of his life to another accident, and Hen who is blaming herself for the accident happening in the first place.

Chim just has to keep strong.

The only thing he wants to do is break down but he can’t. So he picks up the shattered pieces of his mask and plaster them back on, hoping no one will see through the cracks.

What they have all been fearing has happened.

_Doctor Baker asked me to consider the option of taking Buck off life support._

Maddie won’t do it – not yet at least. It’s just a question of time though. One day, sooner or later, she won’t be able to stand looking at the empty shell of her brother anymore, and she will do it.

And Buck will be gone forever.

* * *

Four days.

Buck has been in a coma for four days.

Nothing has changed.

He is still lost to them.

* * *

“I said goodbye to him.”

The words hurt Hen’s throat as she says them.

She does not move to look up at Chim, but she hears him drawing a sharp inhale a breath.

Her guilt only grows.

This is all her fault.

“No, Hen,” Chim blurts out. “You can’t – he isn’t dead. He’s still here.”

She shakes her head, “We both know he’s gone. He’s brain-dead, there’s no coming back from that.”

“I got a rebar through my skull and got back to work a month later. We all have a habit of defying expectations of death in this family. Buck isn’t dead yet and I am not giving up on him. Neither should you.”

Hen wishes she could share her best friend’s optimism. What she wouldn’t give to even have a fraction of his faith, but she closes her eyes and she sees her father – laying in a hospital bed, only alive thanks to machines.

She has lived through this before.

“There’s been no brain activity since he got admitted to the hospital,” she says, monotone almost but it’s only because she is feeling too much. “I didn’t want to say goodbye, I wish I didn’t have to, but I needed to tell him how much he means to me.”

She can’t still bring herself to look at Chim and so she only feels him sit next to her.

His breathing is ragged and short. Were she to look, she knows that she would only see nothing but anguish.

“I can’t tell him goodbye, Hen.” He pauses – when he speaks again, his voice is wet with tears. “I know you’re right and I should, but I just – I can’t. I never had a chance to say goodbye to Kevin and now I’m losing Buck too and I still can’t do it.”

This is so unfair. There has been so many times that Buck could have died and they’ve all been too used to him bouncing back, a smile on his face.

Never in a million years would have she thought that they would lose him this way.

She never wanted to think about losing him.

Suddenly, as if he could not hold himself a second longer, Chim collapses onto her side, sobbing.

She cries too, shamelessly.

She is brokenhearted but she’s angry too and all that she is feeling is too big to name.

Have they not lost enough?

Have they not been through enough?

They hold onto each other a long time, mourning the man that they both think of a little brother of sorts.

* * *

Making the decision to bring Christopher to see Buck was not easy.

He has always known he would have to, but he was still hoping that Buck would wake up before it would come to that.

But Buck is still brain-dead.

“Can he hear me, Dad?”

“I’m not sure, buddy,” Eddie answers, trying so hard not to show how much pain he is in. “It can’t hurt to talk to him though, right? Maybe he’ll wake up if he hears his favorite buddy is there.”

How much it hurts to see his son talking to the man that he loves, telling him all about his day. If Eddie closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that they are at home and that Buck is his husband and that Christopher is just telling them about his day like he would every day of their lives.

“Can I lie down with him, Dad?”

Eddie startles at the request and he almost says no because there are so many tubes to mind – one look at Christopher quiets any refusal he could have.

“Sure, buddy. But be careful, okay? He needs all those machines to breathe.”

As soon as he is settled, Christopher buries his head in Buck’s chest, his short arms wrapped around him. The both of them look so small in that cold hospital bed while neither have a right to. They are too bright and too bustling with life to ever appear so broken.

“Buck,” Chris whispers. “Please, wake up, I miss you.”

It takes biting his fist for Eddie not to scream in pain at the injustice of it all.

* * *

The more time passes, the less hope they have of ever having Buck open his eyes again.

Bobby grows silent and sullen, his eyes are hooded with a grief none of them can understand.

Hen’s guilt threatens to swallow her whole though they all try to tell her it was never her fault.

Chim pretends to everyone that everything is going to be alright, and he lies to himself most of all.

Maddie cries herself to sleep every night, every minute of her free time is spent at her brother’s bedside.

Athena wants nothing but to crumble too but she won’t allow herself to, she needs to stay strong for her family.

Eddie is wrecked, he has barely slept since Buck’s accident and every time he closes his eyes he can only see Buck’s body crashing hard onto the ground and going forever still.

* * *

The firehouse is quiet these days. No one has the heart to joke around or talk about mindless things when one of their men is laying in a hospital bed, not quite dead but already lost to them.

Bobby’s phone starts ringing loudly in the silent firehouse.

His heart seizes in his throat when he sees that it’s Athena calling him.

She wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important, she knows that he is on shift and he knows that she’s gone with Maddie to see Buck at the hospital today.

God, he prays, let it not be the end. He is not ready, he could never be.

This can’t end like this.

As if knowing everything is about to change, or maybe they can just see the despair etched on his face, Eddie, Chim and Hen are staring up at him with fear in their eyes.

He picks up the phone.

“Athena,” he says, already choked up.

He has never been this afraid of a phone call in his life.

“Buck is awake,” she exclaims, frantic. “He’s going into surgery right now but they think he’ll make a full recovery.”

A relief so strong washes over him that his legs give up from under him. His hip hits the table behind him, hard enough that he will surely have a bruise tomorrow but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even feel it.

“He’s awake?” he repeats, shell-shocked.

Distant, as if in a dream, Bobby hears his team stand up at once, all bombarding him with questions but he is elsewhere. Buck is awake. Buck is alive.

“Bobby, Buck was never brain-dead,” Athena continues, still as urgent. “They think he was in a pseudocoma the whole time. He couldn’t move but he was still there.”

Bobby looks down at his arm and sees that Eddie has grabbed him, gentle but firm.

“He’s awake?” he asks, hopeful and terrified both.

The only thing that Bobby can only is give his team a short nod, too overwhelmed to even think about speaking.

Eddie’s face lights up, tears of joy fall from his eyes. Next to him, Hen staggers, only catching herself on one of the chairs before she falls over, and Chim holds onto her, smiling wide and free as he cries out, “He did it, I knew he would.”

“Do you hear me, Bobby?” Athena asks – it’s kind but it’s pressing. “Buck is going to be alright. It’s okay. He’s coming back to us.”

And then, Bobby breaks. He can do nothing to hold back his sob of relief.

Buck is awake. Buck is _awake_.

He is going to be alright. This nightmare is coming to an end.

* * *

It’s nothing short of a miracle to see Buck alive and talking again.

His cheeks are no longer pale but flushed with colors as his family rushes to hold him, just as a way to make sure that this is real and not a cruel dream.

But he is here, he is back to them, and they will not let him go ever again.

“I’m alright,” Buck tells them, eyes shining but smiling. “I’m okay.”

Even just risen up from the dead, Buck always has to make sure about the well-being of others before his own.

Chim gives him a fake punch to the shoulder, “Just let us worry over you for once.”

And it takes one look at his team, his family, to see how rattled they are at how close they came to losing him.

“Alright,” he says with a small smile. “I guess I can do that.”

And it’s easy too to be loved.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be a third part to this series that will focus on the aftermath of Buck's coma (so buddie getting together, etc) but I'm not sure when I'm gonna post it.
> 
> I don't even know about this fic, I just came to a point where I thought I couldn't work on it anymore and should just post it.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it. You can come talk to me on my tumblr [@bilbobagglns](https://bilbobagglns.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Please, leave a comment to tell me what you thought of it?


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